Wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) are utilized to process and purify water from industrial operations and municipal sources. In current implementations, the capacity of a WWTP is not scalable and its components are custom made for its source. As a result, a WWTP has to be designed to not only accommodate current demand, but any foreseeable increased demand. This increases the cost required to design, construct and maintain the WWTP.
Efficient management and control of the WWTP requires a quick and accurate assessment of the operational status of the system, requiring significant operator effort, which significantly increases operating and maintenance costs. Furthermore, management of a WWTP has proven to be a difficult task in view of the unpredictable volume of materials and contaminants that enter into treatment systems. Variations in the quantity of wastewater being treated, such as daily, weekly or seasonal changes, can necessitate changes to a plurality of factors in the treatment process—improper alteration of which can adversely affect the function of the wastewater treatment. Improperly treated wastewater discharged from a WWTP is a serious health hazard.
What is needed is a WWTP that can be dynamically configured and adjusted based on real-time system demands and real-time operational status of system components.
Descriptions of certain details and implementations follow, including a description of the figures, which may depict some or all of the embodiments described below, as well as discussing other potential embodiments or implementations of the inventive concepts presented herein. An overview of embodiments of the invention is provided below, followed by a more detailed description with reference to the drawings.